IN THE COURTS OF THE NATIONS - DataSpace - Princeton ...

Recently scholars working on the medieval Mashriq have offered more nuanced models
of the interactions between Jewish and Islamic courts. Gideon Libson’s work asks a new kind of
question; how did the possibility of recourse to Islamic courts influence the development of
Jewish law? 63 Libson argues that despite Jews’ right to judicial autonomy, Islamic law
“considered the rabbinical courts to be part of the overall Muslim legal system….” 64 The
constant availability of Islamic courts pushed the geonim to adapt to the reality that Islamic
courts always provided an alternative to Jewish courts. 65 Additionally, Uriel Simonsohn uses the
framework of legal pluralism to argue for a complex interaction between Jewish and Islamic
courts. 66 Ultimately, however, Libson and Simonsohn draw primarily on geonic literature; their
Resolution and Legal Transactions among Christians and Jews in the Plural Society of Seventeenth Century
Istanbul” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 2008); Haim Gerber, Crossing Borders: Jews and Muslims in
Ottoman Law, Culture, and Society (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2008), chapter 2; Sophia Laiou, “Christian Women in
an Ottoman World: Interpersonal and Family Cases Brought Before the Shari‘a Courts During the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries (Cases Involving the Greek Community),” in Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender,
Culture, and History, ed. Amila Buturovic and Irvin C. Schick (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007); Sabrina Joseph,
“Communicating Justice: Shari‘a Courts and the Christian Community in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century
Ottoman Greece,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 20, no. 3 (2010). See also Mark S. Wagner, “Halakhah
through the Lens of Sharī‘a: The Case of the Kuḥlānī Synagogue in Ṣan‘ā’, 1933-1944,” in The Convergence of
Judaism and Islam: Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions, ed. Michael M. Laskier and Yaacov Lev
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011), which examines an interesting case of Jews in Yemen bringing an
internal dispute before Islamic judicial authorities. In general, however, these studies do not propose alternative
models for non-Muslim legal autonomy.
63
Gideon Libson, Jewish and Islamic Law: A Comparative Study of Custom during the Geonic Period (Cambridge:
Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School, 2003).
64
Ibid., 45.
65
For instance, Libson traces the development of the category of “rebellious wife” in Jewish law to the geonim’s
attempt to preclude recourse to Islamic courts which offered divorce initiated by women: ibid., 111. See also
Yehezkel David, “Girushin be-yozmat ha-ishah: ‘Al pi te‘udot min ha-genizah ha-qahirit u-meqorot aḥerim,” Sinai
143 (2011): 37-9. David also notes the existence of a Jewish equivalent of khul‘ divorce referred to as “gerushei
pidyon” (ibid., 48-55).
66
Simonsohn, A Common Justice, 11-14. Unlike Hacker and Al-Qattan, Simonsohn discusses the functioning of
Jewish courts as occurring alongside, and often in competition with, Islamic courts (ibid., 130-42). Simonsohn also
addresses the motives for Jews’ turn to Islamic courts, including the limitations on Jewish judicial authority
(especially the limited ability to enforce decisions) and the attractions of Islamic legal institutions, such as
differences in substantive law and greater formality: ibid., 175-82.
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